Well, if it was I In charge, I'd give these guys a call (or a similar vendor)
http://www.racksolutions.com/home/all-products-by-photo/server-racks-cabinets-enclosures.html "Fits any server" and see if they can build me one that works.

They also say “Dell, HP, IBM, Cisco compatible”, which tends to imply that incompatibilities exist, and at any rate what the SSL seems to need is “Fits any collection of half a dozen assorted servers”. ;)

Well, if it was I In charge, I'd give these guys a call (or a similar vendor)
http://www.racksolutions.com/home/all-products-by-photo/server-racks-cabinets-enclosures.html "Fits any server" and see if they can build me one that works.

They also say “Dell, HP, IBM, Cisco compatible”, which tends to imply that incompatibilities exist, and at any rate what the SSL seems to need is “Fits any collection of half a dozen assorted servers”. ;)

Unlike many other industries, the computer business has never had much success at generating standards through neutral bodies like ISO or IEC. Maybe because standards are typically on development cycles so much longer than the hardware and software.

Well, if it was I In charge, I'd give these guys a call (or a similar vendor)
http://www.racksolutions.com/home/all-products-by-photo/server-racks-cabinets-enclosures.html "Fits any server" and see if they can build me one that works.

They also say “Dell, HP, IBM, Cisco compatible”, which tends to imply that incompatibilities exist, and at any rate what the SSL seems to need is “Fits any collection of half a dozen assorted servers”. ;)

Unlike many other industries, the computer business has never had much success at generating standards through neutral bodies like ISO or IEC. Maybe because standards are typically on development cycles so much longer than the hardware and software.

Since the work that out in the field on client computers would be minimal when restarting the project perhaps the "resend" option could be turned on at the servers to eliminate the ghost problem.

The resend option only increases server load. So not a good idea.

And as every computer in the universe has no tasks and will be trying to make contact. It would be better to decrease the downloads/processor so that the host gets enough work for a few hours, and set the server enforced back-off to 60 mins and not the default 11 sec. The lower the server load the less likely chance of ghosts.

I would think that having a (now cleaned up) data base that is lean, with no ghost work units waiting to be resent, would be more desirable. I would try to keep the ghosts out of it as they only bloat the data base with no benefits.

Servers are going to be hit hard anyway and that is the precise time when ghosts are created. I would rather receive my resends than have them waiting to time out and get resent to someone else.Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....Boinc....

The main problem with those cheap twist-ties is that the binding is metal, which can cause problems in a high-speed high-density data environment...

Problem solved! :-P

Actually industry standards lean more towards WAXED twine.. But when you get to patch panels they need to be somewhat loose. Which looks messy which makes management think something is wrong. Which is a pain. So wire it how it works and close the door so people do not nag over things that are NOT effecting how it works.
Janice

The main problem with those cheap twist-ties is that the binding is metal, which can cause problems in a high-speed high-density data environment...

Problem solved! :-P

Actually industry standards lean more towards WAXED twine.. But when you get to patch panels they need to be somewhat loose. Which looks messy which makes management think something is wrong. Which is a pain. So wire it how it works and close the door so people do not nag over things that are NOT effecting how it works.

What may matter more is to have the cable lengths the same so the propagation delays are the same. After all on a multihomed system having different cable lengths for each interface could result in the system picking the one with the shorter length cables for essentially all traffic until that one overloads. That isn't the 50/50 split you want.